AtD translation: too fair to be alone, too crazy for town/exploding into the dark

[Mark Kohut]

I just wanted to point out, as Mike knows now, that there was an archaic
(time of the novel? Can't find my OED magnifying glass) usage
of the word 'fair' as a noun, not an adjective. Which works in this
sentence too.

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 9:58 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fair sex
> From a word-origin angle, "fair" in that usage means *not coarse* (not
> rough). The historical 'claim' was that women in the English-speaking world
> used to be lighter-coloured in hair or skin than men. That then got
> extended with the sense of being more genteel. The phrase "the fairer sex"
> refers to looks.
> https://www.quora.com › Why-are-...
> Why are women called the fairer sex? - Quora
> <https://www.quora.com/Why-are-women-called-the-fairer-sex>
> <https://www.quora.com/Why-are-women-called-the-fairer-sex>
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 8:16 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> noun
>>
>>    - 1.a beautiful woman:archaic"pursuing his fair in a solitary street"
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 7:46 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OK, sorry.  I’m back with a little more sleep and patience than last
>>> night.  It’s really not so obscure.
>>>
>>> As it says, Stray considers herself lucky to have survived to this point
>>> through lots of dangers.  But she has the humility and bigger perspective
>>> to feel her luck was bought at the expense of a number of other girls
>>> who weren’t so lucky, who didn’t survive, “who’d gone down before their
>>> time, Dixies and Fans and Mignonettes”  [names of “types” (stereotypes?) of
>>> girls]
>>>
>>>  *These generically named Girls, now dead, failed to survive because they
>>> were:*
>>>
>>> 1) “*too fair to be alone*,”  But they *died alone anyway*, because they
>>> were “too fair to be alone.”  Look up the definition of a “fair” young
>>> lady, and pick an aspect of that definition that would make her in
>>> mortal danger if left alone in a dangerous place.  “Weak (physically)” as
>>> in “the fairer sex,” is the obvious possibility for that word in this
>>> context.
>>>
>>> 2) “*too crazy for town,*” which implies that her living in that town was
>>> the cause of death, because her “craziness” put her in some dangerous
>>> town location or situation that hastened her death.  The possible scenarios
>>> are endless.
>>>
>>> 3) *And other examples and reasons for their deaths*:  “ending their
>>> days too soon in barrelhouses, in shelters dug not quite deep enough into
>>> the
>>
>> unyielding freeze of the hillside, for the sake of boys too stupefied with
>>> their own love of exploding into the dark, . . .”
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 11:04 PM Mike Jing <
>>> gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> P651.23-29   . . . yet she couldn’t see her luck as other than purchased
>>> > in the worn unlucky coin of all those girls who hadn’t kept coming
>>> back,
>>> > who’d gone down before their time, Dixies and Fans and Mignonettes, too
>>> > fair to be alone, too crazy for town, ending their days too soon in
>>> > barrelhouses, in shelters dug not quite deep enough into the unyielding
>>> > freeze of the hillside, for the sake of boys too stupefied with their
>>> own
>>> > love of exploding into the dark, . . .
>>>
>>>